Howard Abramowitz

Challenged Army Discharge

April 15, 1990|By New York Times News Service.

PITTSFIELD, MASS. — Howard D. Abramowitz, a sociology professor who in the 1950s sued to overturn an Army policy of giving draftees less than honorable discharges because of their political activities before induction, died of lung cancer Monday in his Pittsfield home. He was 59.

Mr. Abramowitz, who received his doctorate from New York University, taught sociology at Skidmore College for the last 26 years and worked in the peace movement. Before that, he did research for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and for the Institute of Industrial Relations.

Mr. Abramowitz was drafted in 1951, won a Silver Star in Korea and was given a certificate of honorable separation when released from active duty in 1953. As required by selective service laws of the time, he went into the Enlisted Reserve. Two years later, however, the Army accused him of having been a member of the Communist Party in 1948 and 1949 and in late 1955 dropped him from the Reserve as a security risk and gave him an undesirable discharge.

He filed a lawsuit, and in 1958 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a discharge had to be based on a soldier`s military service record. The Army upgraded Mr. Abramowitz`s discharge and that of his co-plaintiff, John Henry Harmon III, to honorable and ordered a review of the discharges of 720 other former soldiers. He is survived by his wife, Barbara; a daughter, Karen Kinbar; a son, Adam; his mother, Rose; two brothers; a stepson and a stepdaughter.